Red Lodge

Ok. I will apologize in advance because I may have quite a few posts the next couple months. There’s just too many activities!

I just got back from Red Lodge on Monday night. Red Lodge is a little less than an hour south of Billings. It’s just outside of where you hop on the Beartooth Highway to enter into Yellowstone. Everyone kept recommending this town so Casey and I headed down there Sunday morning to check it out! We stayed at Rock Creek Resort . Loved it! It backs right up to the mountains and the river runs right behind it. I highly recommend it if ever passing through this way.

Red Lodge is a really cute little mountain town. There’s one main street with actually quite a decent variety of art galleries, boutique shops, restaurants and bars. We started off at Red Lodge Ales . It’s right at the start of town and was also highly recommended so, when in Rome. It was super nice out so we were able to sit on their patio – had a few beers and some food. Both food and beer were really good!

We then ventured in to town and parked at one end and pretty much made an appearance at every gallery and store that was open on the street. Had some nice chats with the store owners. The town is quite the tourist attraction in the summer so I think the owners get a kick out of asking where people are coming from. Inevitably people are fascinated with travel nurses and think it is “the coolest job.” We don’t disagree. After we made it to all the shops we went back to one end of town and started our eating and drinking tour. We began at a cute little steakhouse with a really nice outside patio that overlooked the street. Good people watching!  On our way to the steakhouse we had passed a bar that looked like a lot of locals would go there so we headed there next. The bar is called The Snag Bar. It was basically love at first drink in there. The owner’s name is Carl and we are obsessed with him. He is the friendliest guy ever and was so welcoming to Casey and I. We both tried a local Red Lodge brew, both of which were fantastic. We asked Carl five million questions about where to hike and he so kindly obliged. We loved this guy so much that we left to go grab a quick bite at a restaurant called Bogarts (really awesome atmosphere and really good mexican food) and then headed back to the Snag.

Quick history on The Snag. It was built in 1902 and the tin walls and ceiling are still the original. So is the whole bar! The bar itself was made in Chicago and they shipped it up this way and then it was carried by wagon to the town to place into the building. But it’s so interesting because the tin wall and ceilings have this intriguing lady imprinted in all the tiles. If you click on the hyper link you’ll be able to see it. But she almost looks like the Starbucks siren. We asked Carl what the meaning was behind this but he didn’t know. His wife is the local art teacher in town and they were so interested in this woman that they made her the logo for the bar. Ok..carrying on…

Casey and I had planned on having one last night cap at the Snag and then we were going to head back to the resort to sit on our patio and have some wine. We took a different route. We ended up talking to this guy, Dylan, who was born and raised and still lives in Red Lodge. He is super cool and so nice. He introduced us to his crew he was hanging with all of whom were incredibly welcoming and a ton of fun! Two of the girls were actually travel nurses and ended up staying around Montana because they loved it so much. This seems to be a theme. Anyway we ended up grabbing a few numbers, closing down the bar and finally heading back. Then Dylan actually took us hiking Monday!

Monday, as a lot of you saw, we spent hiking through the Beartooth Mountains. We met Dylan in town and all went in his truck to the trailhead. There are multiple reasons why I was super happy Dylan came with us and one of them was his truck. After driving down the road that took us to the trailhead I’m not sure my little Honda Civic would have faired very well.

Anyway, it was so beautiful! The mountains still have a lot of snow in them but the weather is warm. I think it was about 70 and sunny while we were hiking which was perfect. We had decided at the beginning of the hike to just go until we couldn’t walk any further because of snow pile up. We ended up going about 8 miles round trip. Our end goal had been a lake in the middle of the mountains but the snow was way too deep. We were able to stop by this awesome waterfall and just relax on the rocks for a bit and enjoyed a beer. The pictures don’t really do things justice.

We did have multiple occasions where we had to either walk through snow, on snow (if it was iced over) or maneuver around the snow by climbing on rocks, trees etc. It was actually fun until the end of the hike when all of us were soaked. It felt like I was walking in a lake because I had so much snow in my shoes haha. If we fell in the snow or sunk into the snow it was up to my waist, so it was no joke. It was a really good trail to break in my hiking shoes because it wasn’t a terrible incline. So I was happy about that. Oh! We saw a moose on our way into the trail! It was so cool – talk about a large animal. I find it interesting because most people we spoke with in Red Lodge told us they were more scared of a moose than a grizzly. Sooooo, noted. In addition, we saw rockchucks (I’m not sure if that’s the right spelling). These little guys were so cute! I have a picture of one standing on it’s hind legs barking at us on my instagram. They cracked me up.

We got done with our hike and headed back home. We stopped at Dylan’s house and he lives in this super cute little log cabin. He said if we head back to Red Lodge this summer we can pitch a tent at his place and do some “glamping.” So that was cool. Really glad we met him and we all had such a good time together! The people in Montana are insanely nice. It is very bizarre. I’ve only been here a little over two weeks but almost everyone I’ve met has been extremely welcoming and nice. Casey and I are both not used to this hospitality and it’s a really really nice breath of fresh air!

Last night I did another hike with the Meetup group I joined. It was a really nice evening. We did it just before sun set and the lighting was so pretty (as I mentioned in my insta photo). We did Phipps Park, which I had hike last week but didn’t realize there was a longer hiking trail along the ridge. We did the longer trail last night and I loved it. I will definitely be back to do that again. After the hike I went with two of the guys and did trivia. I love trivia so much! It was a lot of fun. We sucked, but it was a lot of fun 🙂 I think I will miss the next two weeks of hikes with this group because of work but hope to join back up in a few weeks.

I work the next three nights now but Casey and I are headed to Bozeman area this weekend to explore the town and do another hike somewhere. I think we may stop at some hot springs as well. Multiple people have recommended Chico hot springs to us. So stay tuned for the next adventure!

I posted a few photos below of the Lake Fork hike and my Tuesday night group I hike with.

Cheers!